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All posts for the month November, 2012

My apologies to all for lack of the usual attention to this blog. A handful of you know that I have been very active on my Facebook account, which I started a few months ago. I had actually avoided Facebook for years, but someone else kind of nudged me onto it at the beginning of August. At the same time, for various reasons, my interests drifted in other directions. Some of my lifelong interests and pursuits are actually connected to what I have been doing on this blog, though in different ways.

I was a pop/rock music critic for many years in my somewhat younger days, with ties to the English-language-based “alternative” postpunk scenes of rock, Goth, and electronica. (I say “English-language-based” because the scenes that I learned about came mainly out of the U.S., Canada, the UK (more than any other place), and Australia – though they spread more globally later… And I was writing reviews in several related magazines by the late ’80s and ’90s and did make some small change out if this, too.) While that might seem far off from what I do here, it isn’t really, for reasons I’ve explained now and then. And this past spring to fall, I have had interesting reunions with people who were part of a music scene I was very involved in in my youth (one of those people actually being the same one who nudged me onto Facebook). So, I have been rediscovering a lot of that stuff and the threads that came out of it, though for years, I kept saying I would not be like other middle-aged people, dwelling on the music of my youth. I still do adore Indian film music, especially from a time long before I was even born, but I have been exploring and posting more about this other stuff in this other place.

I have also gotten back into my political pursuits. Part of this is for a similar reason, that I have a number of related acquaintances whom I brought into that other place, many of whom I have known for 12 to 15 years, since the height of what I might call my own activism. (I became most politically active in the anti-globalization movement of the late ’90s and early 2000s (or “alter-globalization” movement, as it later came to be called in many places), which actually had a lot of similarities to the Occupy movement, some good, some not so good.) Anyway, in addition to these other reunions that I’ve experienced, I was also inspired in a not-so-positive way by the recent U.S. presidential and congressional elections. I did not support either of the major presidential candidates (nor any candidate this time around) and the dismal spectacle of the 2012 elections helped to reinforce my political outlook, which is oriented toward pushing for a more systemic change through means other than the electoral farce. But this is not a place to go into such problems (and, anyway, only a handful of my readers here actually know how far out I am politically, at least for the U.S., and maybe we should keep it that way).

Life has also taken a downturn for me in the past couple of months, and my economic situation is feeling pretty desperate again – which, of course, is another source of inspiration for the aforementioned interests. (Since I was depending on contingent work directly related to the New York City economy, it did not help that we had Hurricane Sandy followed by a Nor’Easter scare followed by election anxieties followed by impending fiscal cliff panic.)

BUT… I still delight in the old Hindi film music as much as ever, and I still enjoy visiting or revisiting these films. (And I still do post about all of this in one place or another. And… Not surprisingly, once again, recently, I have been watching parts of Shree 420 again and pondering the brilliance of this film.) So, I am a little slowed down, but I would say far from finished here – or at least I hope so.

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P.S. As with a few past posts that I wrote over the years regarding how I hadn’t been posting lately, I may delete this one at some point, especially if I feel that I’ve picked up enough again.

I can’t believe that I found a copy of this on YouTube with English subtitles: Do Bigha Zamin! It’s been up for over two years, so I don’t know why I hadn’t seen it before. I have a DVD copy, but the YouTube version actually looks better than my copy (which is obviously not very good – and I think it’s gotten very scratched up as well). If you haven’t seen this movie, of course I recommend that you do. Here is one of my favorite parts:

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If you would like to contact me, e-mail to chardsinger [at] yahoo.com. I also have a Facebook timeline, where I have been spending too much time. (But it is only partially like this blog in terms of subject matter.) Anyway, especially if you know me somewhat, and you are on Facebook, you might want to connect there. Send an e-mail so that we can talk more about it and maybe exchange URLs to "friend."